6.5x25 CBJ Ball

Tungsten core inside a discarding sabot

6.5x25 CBJ Ball

Tungsten core inside a discarding sabot

The 6.5x25 CBJ Ball is the standard cartridge with a tungsten projectile enclosed in a discarding plastic sabot. It is not to be considered as a special armor piercing cartridge, but as an all-round military ball cartridge with very good penetration capability.

It offers high penetration and wounding effect even at long range, and is effective against all targets normally engaged with small arms fire. This includes light skinned ground vehicles, helicopters etc. at closer range, as well as personnel with high levels of protection at distances of up to 300m+.

The low friction of the bullet against the bore among other factors gives high endurance for prolonged firing without overheating the weapon.

A very important feature of the discarding sabot, is that it does not disintegrate. It stays intact after leaving the projectile and follows its path and drops to the ground at 20-25 meters from the muzzle. A typical spread pattern of the sabot at 10 meters range is within a 0,2m radius of the projectile’s trajectory.

Key benefits:

High penetration performance

High hit probability

Long range

High impact velocity at full ranges

High wounding effect

Low levels of barrel wear and corrosion

Non-toxic

In a test of performance against hard targets, a hardened 8mm thick armor plate taken from a rear door of an MT-LB APC was fired at from a distance of 100 meters. The target was fully penetrated and the bullet retained considerable wounding potential, as was evident by a block of gelatin positioned behind the target. Standard military ball ammunition such as 5.56 NATO, 7.62 NATO and 9x19 Parabellum fail to penetrate this target at any distance.

Illustrated here is the effect in soft tissue simulant (ordnance gelatin) of the 6.5x25 CBJ Ball after penetration of the NATO CRISAT target, which is a simulated body armour consisting of a 1.6mm grade 5 titanium plate in front of 20 layers of Kevlar. Below is the Wound Profile of the test, which visualizes the permanent and temporary cavities.

.357 Magnum 158grain hollow point is an ammunition that is known for its good stopping power. It has been used by american police units and many others for a long time and there are plenty of data regarding the performance from real life situations. The drawbacks of using this cartridge is that you are mostly limited to 6 shot revolvers, and the recoil is hard to handle, even for experienced shooters.

When shooting in ballistic gelatin, it shows that the 6.5x25 CBJ Ball has a cavity that is similar in size and distribution to the .357 Magnum. The conclusion can be made the terminal performance is similar. The big difference is that the 6.5x25 CBJ can be shot from converted 9mm pistols with high capacity magazines and a soft recoil.

Precision

Several test have been made to measure the precision of the 6.5x25 CBJ Ball. These pictures show typical hit patterns fired under field conditions (outdoors shooting range) at different distances. The target used has a scoring area that is 500mm in diameter, and 25mm distance between the scoring lines.

6.5x25 CBJ Ball at 100m. A CBJ MS with 200mm barrel and bipod attached was used.

6.5x25 CBJ Ball at 200m. A CBJ MS with 200mm barrel and bipod attached was used.

6.5x25 CBJ Ball at 300m. A Steyr AUG with 325mm barrel was used.

Technical Data

Cartridge weight: 7,5g

Projectile length: 11,6mm

Projectile diameter: 4mm

Projectile weight: 2g

The graph to the right shows the trajectories from different barrel lengths. The X-axis is in m and the Y-axis is in mm.

The graph below shows the muzzle velocities from different barrel lengths at different ranges. The X-axis is in m and the Y-axis is in m/s.

The graph below shows the muzzle energies from different barrel lengths at different ranges. The X-axis is in m and the Y-axis is in Joules.